


Sanchez Slept Here

by mabelmyrrh



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 20:38:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16605047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mabelmyrrh/pseuds/mabelmyrrh
Summary: Morty is coping with the recent passing of a (female) pop star that he didn't get to meet and/or date, with all the pathos and sorrow that a teenage boy overrun with hormones can possess. Rick, in an effort more toward shutting Morty up than alleviating his grief, introduces the boy to dimension D-735, a world where deceased souls still linger- and where the most bizarre Rick yet surfaces.





	1. I.

 

 

       “And now, to welcome a new, sprightly season of symphony and sound, please enjoy a performance by our new soloist… Miss Summer Smith.”

       As her black patent heels hit center stage and the bow touched strings, Mr. Smith couldn’t have been more proud. Summer stood, and Jerry watched his daughter _own_ that violin; he was counting the seconds to when she would also own the stage, the orchestra behind her, the audience, with a magical combination of diligence, skillful fingers, and sound…

       …a sound that _screeched_ , a sound that roared; a creaky, string-tearing sound that tore Jerry’s dreams and eardrums apart and sent him and the audience running. Summer owned the stage, no one would go near her and her deadly weapon of audible assault, she held the orchestra’s glares of contempt and disgust. She had the audience, too, under her power; the horrible violin playing made them scatter as far as their legs and instantly-called Ubers could take them.

       Jerry stood alone. When that bow touched those strings, Mr. Smith couldn’t even balance on his own two feet. He collapsed, fell to his knees—

       And tumbled off the bed.

 

       Groggily, the no-longer-dreaming, doting dad yowled out: “SUMMER! Do you _need_ to practice _now_?!”

       Another cacophony seized Jerry’s already-damaged ears: father-in-law Rick’s voice came through the hall. Sliding a pair of earmuffs off his head, the owner of these scratchy vocals smirked.

       “Jerry, your daughter has few precious minutes before cramming her breakfast down her throat and hauling ass to school where her artistic prowess can only be hindered. So, in the meantime, the hills are alive with the sound of praying for music.”

       Jerry’s face hit the pillow, groaning in the key of C minor.

 

*

 

       “Excuse me for trying to reach my potential and explore my possibilities for awesomeness, Dad,” Summer said, entering the kitchen with her instrument for her future in tow.

       Jerry sputtered more than sipped on his morning coffee. “L-l-look, sweetie, nothing would please me more than seeing you reach your ‘awesomeness’ as a violin player.” He continued, recalling his dream earlier. “Making beautiful music—someday—after lots, and lots…and lots…and _lots_ …”

       Rick rolled his eyes, quite nearly, floor to ceiling. “Whoooa, watch that over-encouragement, Jerry, or it’ll go to her head.”

       Jerry finished: “…of practice, and you’ll be on stage, commanding respect for your skills instead of cat-calls for your looks.”

       Her mother cast a sideways eye at Jerry, who was becoming more enthusiastic with his speech, as she set down plates for each family member.

       “You’ll have money thrown at you for your class, and never, e _ver_ for your ass!”

       Beth, wanting only the best (as well as beauty) for her daughter, chimed in with an air of disappointment: “Yyyeah… great future, honey.”

       “I don’t know, Dad,” Morty began, using his mouth for words before food as he sat at the breakfast table with his family. “It’d be nice to have some music in the house… again…”

       Beth lumped down pancakes for Jerry, for Summer who was repacking her violin, and then for Rick, who rested his chin in one hand and absent-mindedly twirled a fork in the other. She took notice of a sudden air of exhaustion on his face, an air that seemed to spread to Summer just as quickly.

       “The—the sound of youth and femininity serenading us and teaching us about freedom of—of self, and stuff. A strong woman that can provide her unique take on society, and a soundtrack for our daily lives—“

       Summer broke in with sounds of slamming her violin case shut and her own vocals.

       “Morty, we _get_ it. You’re _still_ not over Britt Bayonet’s passing.”

       “Me, not over it?” Morty chuckled—or rather, choked out—a squeaky laugh. “I-I couldn’t possibly be more over it!”

       “Britt Bayonet is dead, she’s done, she’s _gone_.” Summer’s hands landed onto the table with a _thump_ that synced with her last word as she levelled her gaze with her brother’s. "Do us, and yourself, a favor, and go back to harping over some _other_ girl who doesn’t know you exist.”

       Morty sank into his chair. Rick let out a low whistle.

       “Or, better yet,” she continued, “grow up into an _adult_ who recognizes a flash-in-the-pan floozy when he sees one. Britt Bayonet could’ve only dreamt of being a _real_ musician, of being a siren that lures the boys with sweet sounds instead of synthesizers and silicone. She doesn’t _need_ good looks to rock their world.”

       The aspiring songstress hefted her violin case under her arm. With her free hand, she thumbed to herself. “ _She_ said goodbye to pilates and hello to inner beauty. And that siren is up-and-coming. _Recognize._ Boo-yah.”

       As she left the room, Beth’s concern followed.

       “Um—Summer—“ Beth began, “About that, uh, _inner_ beauty…!”

 

       With Beth’s departure, and Jerry’s having slinked away ages ago, Morty was left alone to receive some wisdom from his grandfather.

       “She has a – _uuurp! –_ point, Morty,” Rick noted, with a belch, as he used his fork to manipulate some last few drops of syrup on his plate. “Oversexed infatuation, death and self-introspection are the three inevitables in life. Oddly enough, sometimes in that order. But most of the time, the order can change, with equally varying and devastating consequences.”

       “She’s right,” Morty winced. “Aw, jeez, I gotta get over this. It’s not healthy.” He put his head in his hands. “I haven’t even noticed Jessica over the last couple of weeks, y’know, and she’s been showing off this new top she’s got, and it’s really tight and…“

       “Then again, it’s not over ‘til the dead pop princess sings.”

       “Huh?” The boy was puzzled as he watched Rick slap down his napkin on the table and rise.

       “So, if it’ll put a cork in it and shut down the _whine_ cellar… wanna go see her sing?”

       Morty gaped as if Britt was there, alive and shaking her silicone assets in all their glory right in front of him. He had a feeling that that wasn’t about to happen— not _yet_. Rick didn’t waste any time.

       “Your mouth’s hanging open with nothing coming out. I’ll take that as a yes.”

       He grabbed the still-unsure Morty by his wrist and pulled him up to his feet. Facing a wall, Rick drew his portal gun and fired, blazing a green, glowing pathway into the unknown. With the barely-there acknowledgement of daily routine, the two stepped through the swirling light, and were gone.

 

       The breakfast table was vacated, except for Jerry—who came back toting a bottle of sweetness that might’ve come in much handier earlier.

       “Okay, so I went to get more pancake syrup because the one on the table was sugar-free, and man, you don’t want to _know_ what happened to my system the last time I had sugar-free, or maybe you _do_ because of the whole toilet-exploding thing, so—… where’d everyone go?”

 

*

 

       The spacecraft flew through inky skies and even blacker abysses for what felt like hours. Even so, the fact was—Morty knew—that they’d left no more than twenty minutes ago, and it was the question of the destination rather than the passing of time that hung heavy over his mind.

       “Rick,” came Morty’s hesitant, squeaky voice through the silent space. “I know we’ve done this a hundred times, like three seasons’ worth of times, but… I still have some questions.”

       The wise man of science and sixty-proof took a swig from his flask, barely stifled a belch, and coughed out a “Shoot.”

       “Okay, well… one: where are we going?”

       “Dimension D-735, Morty. ‘D’ for ‘departed,’” he elaborated. Stashing away the flask and leaning forward, closer to the craft’s windshield for some arbitrary precision, Rick played the role of interdimensional tour guide. “If you’ve ever wondered where people go when they die, it’s often the case that this is the place.”

       Morty looked confused. “I thought people went to Heaven or Hell when they die.”

       “False advertising.” Rick cut the end of ‘die’ with quick contradiction. “If you were good, you go to a good place; if you did bad things you go to a bad place. Pfft,” he scoffed. “Where did they go when they were good and _alive_? Did they—did they wind up in cushy, comfy places after doing all their goody-two-shit? _No._ They still wandered around their whole lives. There are bad people living in luxury, and good people going through Hell. And that’s what they’re still doing here, Morty. They’re lost souls still looking for that ‘good place.’ And, you know, what with all the—the grey area between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ when it comes to people… believe me, Morty, it’s—no wonder people stick to this system—it’s just easier to follo— _uuurp_ —ow this way of thinking.”

       “Holy crap, is dimension D-735 that bad?”

       “I wouldn’t know, haven’t been by there that often.”

       “Why not? Is it too much of a _ghost_ town? Ha-ha, ha…” Morty awkwardly giggled, tried launching a joke; but he knew it crashed and burned before it left the orbit of his mind.

       “Uugh,” Rick made no secret of his disgust in the _ghastly_ pun. “They can still feel pain in this dimension, Morty. Just sayin’.”

       “Anyway, second question: why did I have to get dressed up?” Morty raised his hands and gestured down to his current outfit. Rick had told him to change into formal wear, dark grey dress shirt and matching pants, set off with a bright red tie.

       “You wear Sunday best to go to a funeral, don’t you? Show some respect for the dead, Morty.”

 

       They arrived in a place that seemed all too urban and lively to be a land of the dead. The reddish-gold twilight hue of the sky, however, was the singular aspect of Morty’s surroundings that he found abnormal.

       Buildings, businesses and residential areas decorated the landscape, just as they did back home, he observed. As he and Rick walked through the streets, even the neighborhoods looked welcoming. Children ran and played, adults talked as if they had their whole lives ahead of them and some drank as if they were going to die tomorrow rather than, perhaps, beginning their afterlife today. The young traveler did admit to himself, though, that the tombstones in front of each house where mailboxes should have been were just a _little_ creepy.

       “S…so, do you think we’re gonna find Britt…?” Morty was hopeful, his heart, laced with teenage hormones, leaping a few bounds. Not that he’d ever let on, in front of Rick, how keen he was on seeing her—he kept a cool, smooth face.

       “Yeah, she’s somewhere around, I’m sure,” he assured his grandson. “Just so you know, though, it might not be that easy to find her.”

       Rick kept his hands in his lab coat pockets as he strolled beside Morty, perhaps a little too casually in a dimension where dead men (and women) literally _were_ walking.

       “Whenever someone dies, when they arrive here, they’ll take on the form and appearance of the last person they saw before they passed on. So you might want to put the blonde hair, big boobs and applebottom jeans out of your head, and think of another way to find her.”

       Morty felt all the butterflies in his stomach drop dead at once. _No way_. Britt’s famous looks comprised the majority of his knowledge of this woman. When it came to Ms. Bayonet, the image was all he really knew. How was he going to track her down now? He felt a little sick all in a sudden; he wasn’t sure if it was due to the feeling of anxiety, the eating of breakfast, or Summer’s words about women being more than just their appearances rising up from the pit of his stomach. He decided to follow his dad’s example and blame the sugar-free pancake syrup.

       “Morty? Don’t… d—don’t tell me y-you don’t know any other identifying factors that we can use to find this woman.”

       “Uh…”

       Rick’s palm raked down his face with a pressure that could have left indentations—physical evidence— of his frustration, apart from the grimace.

       “ _Morty_!... you can’t just st—stare at a woman and think you’ve got her, trust me, that doesn’t work. You’re no genius, you’re still a freakin’ groupie, not her biographer or—or— do you even know any of her song lyrics, for f—k’s sake? That could clue you in as to any distinctive marking of personality inside the peroxide-blond skull.” His aggravation rounded out in a gravelly groan.

       “Morty… l-look, that’s it. ”

       He took out the portal gun and aimed it sky-high.

       “I’m not about to waste my time on a mindless idol-chase. We’re getting out of here. MORTY! Dammit, look at me when I’m talking to you!”

       He looked down to discover Morty nervously watching a crowd of D-735’s inhabitants, approaching far too close for either of their comfort. A policeman grabbed hold of Rick’s wrist.

       “Sir? Put down the weapon, _now_.”

       “Weapon? What—this? This is just a portal gun, look—“

       He fired it, and the spiraling, viridescent cyclone lit up the sky for everyone to see. If it wasn’t for the other policeman joining the first in seizing both Rick’s wrists, the interdimensional backpacker would have leapt through that vortex to go home, right that minute, grandson in tow.

       The small crowd screamed and yelped in awe and terror.

       “Seriously? Don’t tell me this is something totally new to you guys. From the looks of things around here, you’re all human, so most of you must’ve watched a crap-ton of Star Trek by now.”

       “ _Witchcraft!”_ shrieked one woman, clad in black Puritan garb and clutching a cross. Her crucifix’s metal was either badly tarnished or exposed to open flame at one time. She kept pointing, in horror, to the portal.

       Rick snarled. “Oh, for—“

       “Look, mister, we understand,” the younger policeman offered consolation. “We know how you got here, we know what unfortunate circumstance must’ve befell you. After all, you do look a _lot_ like Rick Sanchez—“

       “Bitch, I AM Rick Sanchez!” Declaring his identity was not of much help. He was received by gasps and flinches, and then was restrained, and led away towards the crowd.

       “Come with us.”

       Morty heard the policemen, and tried to follow. The same two policemen, however, held out their arms to block his passage. The panicked boy called out to him.

       “It’s okay, Morty,” Rick returned the call. “I’ll be back, just stay there!”

 

       Before Morty could question everything with a squeaky “what,” Rick was gone—disappearing around a creepy little white picket fence that framed one of the creepy little houses in this idyllic cul-de-sac. Unnerving, pastel-colored and plastic; like something out of an old 1960’s B-movie, in what felt like an abandoned movie set. Just fourteen and nowhere near any Boy Wonder, Morty sat and steadily kept his stare on the ground.

       He soon got up, started wandering around on the street. Not like he was needy; not like he wasn’t already _fourteen_ and could handle himself and had the reasoning and muscles of a man already. He was nowhere near lacking in quick alertness, akin to his grandfather whenever he misplaced his favorite flask of booze—

       Morty yelped when someone bumped into him. A young man, clad in a business suit with a lively check pattern, was in such a hurry that he did not notice the boy by the park bench—which, like Morty himself, blended into the scenery. The stranger seemed nice enough, his facial expression of mild shock turned quickly to pleasant understanding.

       “Hey, watch it, huh?” Morty extended both hesitant friendliness and annoyance.

       The youth chuckled good-naturedly, then uttered a series of _blurps_ , _grrowgs_ and _gnyeeefas_ and started on his merry way. _An alien…??_ Shock hardly even registered with Morty anymore. While still on his highest guard, he was amazed with his nonchalance. Perhaps he really _was_ growing up and getting accustomed to the ups and downs, the good and bad, the everything’s-gonna-be-fines as well as the scared-shitlesses of the world he lived in, as well as the other worlds Rick introduced him to so far. Either that or Rick was corrupting him entirely.

       Only a boy like Morty could stumble over his own foot—a toe bumping into a heel as he was looking up while walking—and fall, _plop_ , onto his bottom right back onto that bench where he started from. He sighed, both from his own klutziness and comic relief in how he had a safe, rather comfortable landing: butt-first. When he looked up, just slightly, so did the circumstances. A familiar white-labcoated figure approached him.

       “H-Hey…” Morty didn’t look up to meet faces with Rick. He’d rathered not look at Rick’s most likely furious face right now, nor did he want to know what was going on with that other Morty. The little-grandson part of him just wanted to hear Rick’s voice near him and know life was returning to normal again, one dimension at a time.

       “Glad you’re back, Rick. Where’d you go?”

       No answer. Great. Rick was pissed at something—as usual.

       “Come on, man, it couldn’t have been _that bad_.” Silence.

       Becoming fed up with Rick’s attitude, a surge of very adult aggravation overtook the adolescent. He did not stand, but chose to “sit” his ground, and tell his reckless, self-absorbed grandfather a thing or two.

       The view from this sit-in was not what Morty expected. If he’d opened his mouth, he would have been scolding the barrel of a gun that was aimed inches away from his white teeth.

       Standing over him was a madman in a white labcoat, all right—but a labcoat of a different cut, different sleeves, accented by a light brown skirt, long legs clad in tall boots. A silhouette that was set off by white spiky hair and a hand holding a gun was not unfamiliar to Morty, but this one was smaller, stranger. Curvier.

       This madman looked like Rick—but looked even more like a woman.

       The only thing more disturbing than the cold steel Morty could feel brushing his upper lip was his assailant’s holding him down with the familiar Sanchez stink-eye.

       “Bad? Oh, but it is… but _it is._ Give it up. And while you’re at it, _die_ , rot, biodegrade, and let society recycle you into something worth existing like the piece of garbage that you are...”

       Her eyes narrowed as her contempt grew.

       “…Morty.”

       The aforenamed boy let out a scream.


	2. II.

       An eerie silence filled the space between the two.

       “S…oooo… you think I should wear _that_ to the recital?” Summer’s voice raised with an inflection that was both curious and apprehensive.

       “What, is it too much?” Beth cheerfully held up, on a clothes hanger, what would make her daughter shine.

       “No, no! It’s great, it’s… _really_ great, great like… what you never ever let me wear to prom, great.” Summer lowered her raised palms, and the suspicious highness of her voice. “But… why that? Why now?”

       She would shine—or get arrested. This patent black leather skirt so short it could’ve sparked a new nano-miniskirt craze, this astounding amalgam of jacket, velvet and cropped this and that… this, Summer thought, was half-awesome, half-I-don’t-know. Nothing like _that_ would ever be seen at the Philharmonic one day. So, if and when that “one day” came for Summer, where she and her violin would be worthy of them, the orchestra’s conductor would have to ethically, fully approve of how she looks first. Especially if that conductor was male.

       “Because, sweetie…” Beth set down the outfit. “You are starting a brand new adventure in your life now. And in that… blossoming, while you’re building a good body of work, it’s always good to remember that men prefer the _best view_ of that body of work!”

       Summer’s knuckles were at her mouth; she was pensive for a moment or two. “So…” she glanced over at the violin laying atop her dresser, “That’s what I’m working on…but _this—_ “ the musician-to-be gestured to her modest figure, “—this is what I’m working _with_?”

       “Sort of. But—“

       “Aaaall of this is what’s on display, that’s _it_? It’s not about, you know, talent or skill I’ve been working so hard on?”

       Beth’s face contorted with shock and hurt. “N-no—no, Summer! That’s not it, you need that too, just—“

       One of Rick’s beakers in the garage shattered from a high-pitched squeal courtesy of Summer.

       “Oh…my God!” She exclaimed, hands to her face in exuberance. “This is the _raddest_! Sure, I’ll actually _learn_ two or three songs, but with how amazing I’ll look, I can just keep playing them over and over at so many venues! And no one will know they’re the same songs because their eyes will be so busy checking me out that their ears won’t even notice!”

       “S—Summer, honey, that’s… not…” Beth’s vocabulary paled more than her face. Or—she felt like her face _should_ have been going pale. The truth was, she was… excited for Summer. _Excited_ for her daughter to be relying on her appearance for her career! What was happening to her? Where was her motherly concern, her common sense? Maybe all that could be found in another Beth.

       She flashed back to when her scientist father once offered her an easy exit from her busy life: a clone Beth replacement to take over all her life’s duties. She declined, of course—at least…she remembered declining. Her mind began to spin, somersault and cartwheel.

       “And then the remixes will come, from club to moombahton, and I’ll be even cooler than Britt Bayonet! Not that she’s cool, she’s fake. But _I’m_ real! And because learning the violin was the _best_ decision my high school counselor helped me make, I won’t have to look like her when _I’m_ 38!” Summer took a deep breath to regain air after her many, many words. She released that breath with a deep, dreamy sigh.

       Beth’s expression blanked in her brain’s search for words. Right away, Summer threw her arms around her and gave her a good squish.

       “Mom, you are _the coolest_! I don’t know when you started getting so awesome, but it’s like you’re a totally different person. My future is in the Lou Vuitton _bag!_ I love you!”

       Lips quivering, eye sockets overflowing with tears—not so much of maternal pride, but of mad panic— Beth whimpered.

       “You watch your mouth, young lady!” suddenly burst out of Beth. “I’m _not_ a different person! I’m _me_ , I’m your mother, Summer. Don’t you _ever_ forget that…”

       She clutched her daughter by her shoulders, pupils almost dilated with an insecurity that was infecting her entire being.

       “EVER.”

       Summer knew better than to break her mother’s eye-lock. Or move. Or breathe too loudly. She only answered: “Okaaay… so you’re ‘you.’ Got it.” Her voice was all careful, monosyllabic reassurance.

       “I’ll just go try on that outfit that the complete and _totally_ not-different-in- _any-_ single-way _you_ gave me… right now.”

       Beth felt a certain contentment in watching her daughter’s wide-eyed, fully-convinced stare and backwards-shuffling feet as she made her way towards the bathroom to change.

 

*

       “Th—there’s got to be some kind of huge mistake, I didn’t do anything!”

       The woman’s stare never ceased its Medusa-esque cold stoniness. “You _are_ Morty, aren’t you?”

       Morty Smith fidgeted with his shirt collar, unable to falsify an answer to that.

       “Yes, but—“

       “Then, as Rick Sanchez of dimension D-735, it’s my duty to put an end to you.”

       “WHAT!?” As Morty’s life flashed before his eyes (mostly video games, adventures with Rick and Jessica from school undressing in a hundred different ways… he only imagined that last one), the Rick he knew was now behind him.

       In truth, he was literally dropping in on the conversation, locking his hands onto Morty’s shoulders the moment he landed on the ground. Rick maintained a fixed squatting position—not unlike that of an expert ninja warrior—as well as his cool.

       “Sorry that took so long, Morty. Police questioning seems to take longer and longer every time it happens to you, and these guys were hel—hella slow.”

       “Rick, you ran from police?” the current young captive asked in a frantic whisper. His female assailant’s position did not change.

       “Relax, Morty, it’s like Mayberry R.F.D without an Andy Taylor making sure people aren’t f—king things up left and right. It was too easy. I left a decoy.”

       At this very moment, if one entered this particular dimension’s police headquarters and took a peek into the room of questioning where Rick was held not long ago, they might be amused at the sight of the sheriff, his deputies, and some higher-up citizens cowering in a chair as if facing the most disgusting criminal, or terrifying monster.

       A tiny, soft plush doll bearing a keen resemblance to Rick sat atop the table. Judging from the horrified silence from its observers, its cute black button eyes and smiling little mouth adorned with a peculiar touch of drool must have dictated an impending doom beyond human comprehension.

       “What do you think it is?” inquired one shaky voice.

       “Is…is it voodoo?” ventured an anxious deputy.

       “VOODOO!” the same Puritan woman from earlier yelled, her thin bony fingers pressing into the deep-set burn marks on her face.

        “VOODOO!!” the chorus came together, culminating in everyone exiting the room in a chaotic sprint.

 

       Here, Morty’s very visible fear was no less intense from that of D-735’s law enforcement. Something unfamiliar and intimidating was facing him, too.

       “Anyway, it’s getting pretty dark,” Rick began. “If you wanna find Br— _uuurp_ —Britt Bayonet, we’d better get a move on and start checking the bars. Gotta th—think like Britt to—to find a Britt, you know.” Rick finally noticed the revolver pointed at Morty’s face, and acknowledged its owner with all the anxiety any concerned grandfather can feel and get under control.

       “Uh, who are you?” he asked, inconvenienced and in need of a drink.

       She absent-mindedly lowered her gun before she spoke, after having been standing there, frozen, for a while. Her body one big, well-shaped stalactite. She chose the freeze-up to represent strength, her eyes never moving from this new adversary and her weapon never budging from her victim.

       Her voice started bewildered and ended harsh. “You have to _ask_?... I—“

       Morty grabbed on to this moment, this break from the imminent danger, and used it to calmly recount the situation to Rick.

       “RICKSHE’STRYINGTOKILLMEANDIDON’TKNOWWHYSHEJUSTPOINTEDTHEGUNATMEANDSAIDITWASHERJOBTOKILLMEANDRICKDOSOMETHIIING!!”

       Rick pulled Morty’s claw-like fingers from his shirt, untwisting the fragile little limbs from light blue fabric, and appeared to grasp the entire premise.

       “Okay, listen, whoever Rick you are from whatever dimension…” he waved her off casually as just another Rick doing Rick-things.

       “You’ve got the wrong Morty. This one wouldn’t hurt a fly, much less kill off hundreds of versions of himself _and_ me, take over an entire society, become their leader and be an expert at mind control. Look at this kid, he’s fourteen. Do you think he can even control his _own mind_ , much less someone else’s?”

       Morty didn’t know what kind of look he had on his face, but he hoped it was an innocent, endearing one.

       He might have looked soft enough. The female Rick let her hands relax and her gun aim closer toward the ground. Her finger on the trigger trembled like brittle leaves on an old tree known to be sturdy. Clearly, her mind was also on the shaky side, her focused eyes having nothing in common with the rise and fall of her chest from erratic breathing.

       “You… could be right,” she said quietly.

       Morty noticed her stare finally moving away, dropping to the pavement for some moments. The twisting in his stomach finally began to slow and loosen, only to clamp and tighten again when she leaned forward and was almost nose-to-nose with him. She, unlike Morty, was much faster at regaining her composure and focal point to take the next step in a crisis.

       “They look exactly alike, of course…” she said. “But there’s something in this one’s eyes…”

       A minute passed of her studying him, right down to his retinas, it felt like. And then she reared back. And Morty wondered if she, like his grandpa Rick, had some sort of manic personality disorder of her own. She was now teary-eyed.

       “Morty…” Her tone was softer now. Weaker, like an admonished dog.

       The weapon fell to the street with a clatter, a sound louder than all their voices, and she pulled Morty into a tight embrace. She’d undergone some invisible transformation from predator to protector, a lioness choosing to shield her cub rather than sinking her teeth into its nape. She talked over his shoulder.

       “I’m so sorry…so sorry… you’re okay. You’re—you’re beautiful... I’m sorry…”

       “Whoaaaa, hol—hold—hold on, all I said was he’s innocent. Do you see a manger or three old guys bearing gifts anywhere? Jeez.”

       She took Morty’s face in her hands, engaging in one last soul-meeting through eyeballs, then violently turning her eyes up at Rick. There were strong hints of something like recognition in her behavior with Morty. Some recognition that registered in her at an almost epiphanic level. As if seeing this Morty—a good Morty—was just as crucial and fulfilling as putting an end to the heartless, dead-eyed Morty she remembered.

       “I’ve never been so happy to see such stupidity,” she said through bleary vision, her mouth speaking to Morty but her eyes never leaving Rick.

       Standing up, the small lady-Rick left a mildly reassured Morty, and surveyed the ‘original’ Rick. In a rare instance, he made no sound, he made no motion; the only movement was his slow, controlled breath like a rabbit keenly aware of a preying, stealthy creature. It was his way with everyone. A well-guarded prison wall, an invisible barbed-wire fence wrapping around premises that’s seen all kinds of attack.

       She reached a hand out and touched Rick’s hair lightly, feeling the silver spikes between her fingers.

       “Your hair. It’s grey,” she observed. Rick’s eyelids drooped.

       “You can distinguish shades of monochrome. Congratulations, you’re not colorblind,” he dryly retorted.

       As soon as he finished speaking, the girl flinched.

       “Your breath— it’s… flammable.” She spoke as if she hadn’t seen the likes of Rick for ages. Or, assuming she had run into a Rick or two from other dimensions or had seen the Citadel at least once, she’d never come across _this_ Rick before. She’d launched her visual examination early on; now was the solidifying of observation.

       “Right? Fact is, sweetie, I don't just hit the sauce, I dive into it and bathe in it 'til I'm the cleanest filthy drunk on this side of the multiverse.”

       A look of repulsion on her face switched to mild amusement. A smile pulled on her face, the kind that one gets when a joke disgusts them, the humor in it dissolving to being tickled by the fact the person actually opened their mouth to say it.

       “Got it. So, while you were having a pool party with Jack Daniels, I’ve been on a seek-and-destroy mission to wipe a… _different_ kind of Morty off the face of this universe. What are you two here for?”

       “A-are you from the Citadel of Ricks?” Morty answered her question with a question.

       “Kinda. I used to be on the Council.”

       “Whoa,” he remarked. Rick was not as impressed:

       “Great, Morty,” Rick folded his arms across his chest. “We should’ve just turned ourselves in to the police here as witches or some shit. Same thing, with the last Do-Gooder Rick still hanging around.”

       “Is _that_ what you think I am?” she scoffed, voice all acid as she looked at him. “For your information, I didn’t care for them either. And the feeling was mutual. I was exiled long before their entire existence was nuked.”

       “Oh, really? What for?” Rick sent her judging stare right back at her, daring her to either reveal more of herself or to insult him—both acts a danger to her.

       “I’m…not really sure,” she said. As she elaborated, her dark gaze would move from the ground to the side of her, then to occasionally make eye contact with Morty—and then with Rick. The fixedness of the eye-meet with this one was beginning to lose its stony quality.

       “It could’ve been related to how I—sorta— _lied_ to them about my identity, thus committing a bit of perjury. Or it _might_ have something to do with that…” she, in a bizarre display of nervousness, casually scratches the back of her head as an awkward smile pulls at her face, “… _really_ silly thing I did of trying to reveal the truth about their tiny tyrant of a president and what he’s really up to… spent a few nights in jail for that, wasn’t fun. Or…”

       Her monologue concluded with a (somewhat defeated) rubbing of her upper arm.

       “Or maybe it just all boils down to the fact that I’m the only Rick without a dick.” She shrugged, holding her palms up in resignation. “Draw your own conclusions.”

       “Eh, everyone’s got their pr—“ a belch, “ _—_ problems.” Rick mimicked her shrug, with an even greater nuance of indifference.

       Morty offered a commentary. “I don’t know—I mean, I don’t see anything wrong with a Chick-Rick, y’know?”

       The damsel from a different dimension looked puzzled, then smiled and gave Morty a pat on his head. She surprised herself with how her touches onto Morty were affectionate, soft, fully without intent to kill him.

       “Chick-Rick. Heh. Not that I haven’t heard that one before, but… I like it.”

       She wasn’t planning on standing with her arms akimbo for more than a moment, but a noise she heard in the distance forced her to. The audible disturbance was of a clamoring male voice followed by some whisper-soft clattering that was enough to raise the pump of her adrenaline to a new level of all-systems-go. Her head jerked over her shoulder to identify any attackers—old or new—behind her.

       “Huh? Oh. Old friends coming to say hi?” Rick’s shot in the dark at humor was far less noticeable than the other shot in the dark: the one originating from a pistol in the distance.

       Her teeth clenched.

       She whirled around; there was a flash of long grey hair flicking in the dusk’s half-light as she did. Then, a jump, and the sound of clumsy footsteps.

       “Hey, wait, I’m not done talking to y— _hey,_ “ the elder, male Rick’s voice took on a gruff aggravation, “Get back here!”

       And, into the city’s darkness, she vanished. Morty let down the hand he reached out to… _to do what?_ he wondered. What could he have done to help her? _Did_ he want to help her?

       “…Damn. You know, Morty, she might be a legit Rick.”

       “How’s that?”

       “Only two human beings run that fast and make themselves scarce _that_ quick, Morty. Olympic athletes— and Ricks running from the law. And s-speaking of evading morality and ethics and that sort of thing, I think I got an idea of where we can find your Britt Bayonet.”

 

*

 

       “A talent show?”

       “Yes!” Beth and Jerry, in a rare moment of harmonious concordance and singsong voices, smiled as they gave their stunned daughter an answer. Summer was particularly disturbed by how her parents were clasping each other’s hands with glee. Glee? In _this_ house? And because of _her_?

       She was a little lost by the idea. “I—I don’t…I… do you think I’m good enough? I’ve only learned one or two songs so far.”

       “Of course, sweetie!” Jerry was beaming. “The community center’s putting the whole thing up, and Lord knows it’d be nice to have someone play _actual music_ for a change! Bluetooth speakers will be silenced, audio won’t come out of a cable, but out of a beautiful young lady… Summer, with your skill set so far, and a good classical piece…”

       Beth completed her husband’s pep talk, grabbing and then holding up a finishing touch to Summer’s enchanted evening: a shopping bag, reflective pink with a distinctive store’s logo, holding fabric to clothe her professional body that night. “And with this outfit…”

       The parental cheerleaders finished in sync: “You can’t go wrong!” With that, they shared a quick peck on each others’ lips.

       Somewhere in between satiating her curiosity of what was to be her performance eveningwear, and deciding she did not want to see this PDA— _Perturbing Display of Affection_ —Summer reached for the bag and peered in at its contents. What (little) she saw there made her eyes light up and her fingers feel like fiddling. “Oooh…” Any protests she had before now dissolved into giggles. “Oh-ho… ohohoho!!”

       “I’ll _do it_!” the girl exclaimed and ran up the stairs to practice.

       “Ahh,” Jerry sighed in contentment. Then, glancing at his equally-supportive wife, he said:

       “Er, honey, what _did_ you get her, exactly?...”

 

 

*

       “A… talent show?”

       Morty looked around, feeling uncomfortable despite the fact his bottom was sinking into plush theatre seats. The theatre, the venue was nice enough, but he would feel a lot more relaxed if he knew precisely why they were here. The twosome arrived in Dimension D-735 to locate the posthumous personality Britt Bayonet, that he knew (and was grateful to Rick for it, as usually his madcap grandfather would rather pop open a bottle than pop over here, especially on Morty’s account). But was this just a leisurely side-trip?

       “Yup.” Rick replied, leaning back into the chair. “Think about it, Morty. When she was still kicking, when was the last time Britt went on tour, or dropped an album she actually showed her face for?”

       Morty opened his mouth to speak.

       “You don’t remember? _Exactly._ Well, the correct answer was ‘when she was still kicking.’ I.e., still a star. And you can go on about how she’ll—she’ll always be a star to you, but Morty, I remember hearing about the DUI’s, the indecent exposures from limousines and that crazy, gratuitous…” He shook his head. He was a mature, level-headed soul for once in his life.

       “It ma—it makes you realize every star violently and horribly blows up into a big—a huge, ugly supernova, Morty.”

       “Your point?” The boy almost wished an act would begin just to shut Rick up. Then again, his curiosity hadn’t reached its end in a supernova of disappointment yet, so he was willing to listen.

       With a swig of “liquid courage,” Rick explained. “With a history like that, every washed-up pretty girl only wants to be pretty again. Noticed again, and gotten filthy again with the grabby hands of her fans again. Doesn’t matter how she gets that exposure, she knows how to get it, and _This Dimension’s Got Aptitude!_ might be her first—or most desperate—try in this dimension.” While speaking, his hand rummaged around the side of his seat, looking for a program. He quit, laying his palms on the armrests once again; Morty observed him giving up rather quickly.

       It wasn’t a habit of Rick’s to show respect for others, but maybe he’d stopped because the lights dimmed and the first appearance of someone’s aptitude was about to start.

 


	3. III.

       Morty knew that the credit for the greatest show on Earth lies with Barnum & Bailey, but he couldn’t help but feel an excitement climbing through his veins. As if he were about to witness the very thrilling, the very bloody, or the very sublime, he sat on edge, on form, on full-steam-ahead show-me-what-you-got juicy anticipation.

       Rick knocked a swig from his flask.

       A beauty pageant was in its final stages. An announcer, a creature not of anything Earthly or human, though bearing that all-too-familiar pearly showbiz smile, led a harem of comely belles on-stage. He encouraged them to part their pretty lips and dazzle the audience with glittery words of girlish aspirations. It should be noted that by ‘comely,’ it is understood that they were otherworldly beautiful, from their heads to their sometimes-webbed, often-clawed toes. With fluttering comet-blue eyelashes long enough to braid, solar-tanned skin far wilder than the usual sci-fi shades of green, they wore swimsuits ranging from Aphrodite’s to thongs to tie-sides. _To swim in what,_ Morty wondered. In that wondering, that place of logic, he felt his masculinity take a nose-dive—and then was quickly reassured in its resurfacing when visions of these scantily-clad alien women came to him. Swimming in some planet’s craters; water, slime or liquid mercury running and glimmering down their bared flesh.

       “And if _you_ win, little lady, what will _you_ accomplish?” The presenter held out a wireless microphone, wrapped in his tentacle-hand.

       “I’ll save all the little animals, feed starving children, outlaw furs including human body hair… and, um—bring world peace!” chimed the blond-haired, four-blue-eyed siren; her voice carried all the musicality of a forty-year-old broadcasting the aftereffects of smoking six packs of cigarettes a day. _Good Lord,_ Morty thought, his staggered expression revealing the question in his mind: _who did_ that _one see before_ she _died?_ The other martian missies applauded her, with an occasional side-eye and stink-eye.

       Morty cringed at hearing her voice. Rick leaned over with sotto-voiced commentary and a sly grin:

       “How much you want to bet the carpet doesn’t match the drapes, Morty?”

 

       The pageant passed; the swimsuit competition swam on by. This was a variety show, and had Morty not been a regular tourist through dimensions by now—scenic routes through star clusters, encounters with extraterrestrials where the most normal skin color was mustard, and worlds where pizzas ate phones _and_ feather dusters—this would have been a variety that would enchant and shock him for years to come. As the case was, he already had nearly a lifetime’s—if not just some stuffed-to-the-brim years of adolescence—worth of fertile fields of trauma for therapists to wander through in his future.

       “Oookay, you lively little things!” chimed the announcer, with a human fakeness. “You’ve been a great audience. Next, we have a reeeeal treat for you. Put your hands together for a performance from Miss _Ricktoria Sanchez_!”

       Amid the tentacle-strewn, shark-toothed, triple-lipped mouths in the audience, two jaws fell. Not the spontaneous ones of the aliens, but those of Morty—and Rick.

       “Rick… _toria_?” Rick tried to assemble some speech. “Morty, get—g—get a load of this, some… w—wh—what kind of conceited, super-narcissist Rick goes around naming himself after some—some queen of England? How far, Morty—” he sputtered, the ever-present spot of drool on his lower lip now airborne, “— _how far_ up do you think his head is up his—“

       The spotlight shone on long, silver hair, cascading over demure shoulders; on a white lab coat that was cinched around a small waist worn by a petite woman, sleeves ending at delicate hands holding a violin onto one shoulder. The violin looked as old as a Rick, but the player certainly didn’t.

       The Rick sitting beside Morty merely _sat_. Some stars aligned, some blue moon rose up past Earth’s horizon and helped illuminate this rare occasion: Rick was silent.

       “— _As…_ you were saying, Rick?” Morty already recognized her, but the shock value was none the lesser. A lime-sans-tequila kind of sour claimed Rick’s face, and he folded his arms and silently demanded a show that had _better_ be _damn good_.

       Ricktoria stared down her audience. Her dusky eyes briefly passed over the ocean of intergalactic spectators but, in her scan, recognized no one. Behind her was a smaller girl, about teen-aged with curly brown hair and a much more timid demeanor, rolling forward what looked like a DJ table. The presenter leered, then took a step away from the performers.

       “Here she is, with her rendition of popular Earth vocalist Britt Bayonet’s ‘Hypoxic!’”*

       If Morty’s attention wasn’t captured and held hostage before, it was now.

       The female Rick unleashed the opening notes to the radio- and nightclub-worn tune in rapid succession. Notes flew from every bounce, caress and jitter of the strings by an audacious bow in the woman’s hand. The brown-haired girl, at whose powerful resemblance to himself Morty awed at, used the equipment on her DJ table to fill the theatre with the song’s uptempo backing track; synthesizers filled in the rhythms that accompanied and uplifted those of the once-modest, now shameless violin. Vocals were absent—the strings sang the verses, wordlessly, of a romance so intense that it intoxicates, confuses, and eventually captures.

       Far from intoxicated (with anything other than some good old 90-proof), however, was Rick. _Wasn’t he?_ In between rhythms of the percussion of Rick’s fingers tapping to the beat, Morty curiously cast a glance at his grandfather. Rick’s pose was one-arm-over-the-back-of-the-chair-casual; his legs were crossed and his other hand’s knuckles grazed his chin with a dignified air that said “let’s get this weird shit over with.” His eyes, however, never turned away from the stage. They still retained the patience of the scientist that never stopped; the academico intrigued by every twist and curve that may (or may not) be unfamiliar to him. His only other movement was a slow, interested bending of his body forward—that was all.

       “That girl kinda looks like you, Morty,” he took a moment to observe this as well.

       The musical assistant alternated between being dee-jay and backing vocalist, mouthing the words to _Hypoxic_ in a voice that probably was as meek as her looks or her male counterpart in the audience.

       Half-electronica—half-concerto—the music came to a screeching halt when the musician got hit with a type of ore rather than requests for an encore. The strings stopped when Ricktoria let out a sharp cry.

       A stone hurled from a member of the audience had struck Ricktoria on the head, its sharp edge missing her eye, but its sharper blow placing her in pain and the theatre in silence. The backing track stopped, and the thin track of blood from her brow started. Through the echoing pain radiating from just over her eye, the violinist roared as only a flawed lady or a perfect Rick could:

       “ _Who did that_?!”

       As though rising from some black-box lagoon, the one who cast the first stone stood up. A man, surprisingly human in form, his brawn-less skinniness bulky with the largest muscle on him—his large belly. The fleshy mass was home to likely much alcohol, and alcohol-inspired courage to commit an act such as he had just done. He reeked of liquor, not like Rick whose faint cologne masked and ameliorated his now-natural _eau de vodka_. This one smelt _foul_. His baggy jeans, pasty pallor, facial scruff and vocal gruff left no wonder at his past being possibly as stained and spattered with red as his disgusting wifebeater.

       Morty stood. “What the hell?!” Instinctively, he would have hid behind Rick. Now, he faced the revolting figure. _What had come over him_ , he wondered for a second.

       “ _Hypoxic_ isn’t supposed to sound like that,” the stranger snarled. “You couldn’t have gotten it more wrong. You couldn’t play that to a Hilton—hotel conference room, no one would say ‘that’s hot.’ It _sucks,_ and you could NEVER be me.”

       The man wiped his mouth using the back of his hand—a curious smudge of pink running from his lips across his cheek now—and put on a blonde wig, shoulder-length, also streaked with pink. He spoke with a pseudo-British accent.

       “Stop _ruining_ my song!” he hollered.

       Some sort of loyalty consumed Morty when he shouted: “She couldn’t ruin it any more than _you_ can, pal! With a karaoke bar reject like you, Brittany could only turn to _shit-tany_!”

       “Way to stand up for your woman _and_ music-kind, Morty,” Rick muttered as he regarded the delinquent without any sort of alarm.

       “M-my woman? Hey—“

       He was about to scold Rick when he caught sight of the stranger and really _looked_ at him for the first time. His eyes sought for some appearance beyond appearances. The corners of the boy’s mouth turned down in a distinct, slowly-dawning horror. This creepy character’s characteristics, physically, did not match the personality. Bratty attitudes can be found in middle-aged men as well, sure (let’s not start on Rick). But this was a case of the uncanny in which the abjection rose like vomit up into Morty’s brain instead of his throat. The question, like acidic bile, surfaced to his mental tongue and, as bile does, tried to make its way past his lips. But he couldn’t speak it:

_Rick, how exactly did Britt Bayonet die…?_

       “Stay out of this, kid,” the violinist finally spoke up, handing her instrument over to her Morty lookalike. “You want a cover artist battle? Fine.”

       Ricktoria hunched her shoulders, letting her white coat drop off of them and puddle onto the stage floor. Armed with nothing but a pale blue sweater, boots unfit for combat, and her fists, she held up those fists defensively.

       “You want a _Piece of Me_? Let’s go, _I Wanna Go._ It’s you and _Me Against the Music_ , and you’ll find I’m a hell of a lot _Stronger_ and to measure up to me you’re going to have to _Work, Bitch_ , and if you think I’m only good enough for a _Slumber Party_ then you’re _Crazy_ because I’m going to make it _My Prerogative_ to kick your ass so far from here that they’ll think you ran away to re-join the _Circus_ , you freak!”

       Morty mimed wiping sweat off his forehead.

       Tugging down at his grungy wifebeater, a layer of brown, dingy grime transferring from fingertips to fabric, the challenger responded:

       “Well, little girl, you’d better hide behind that _Big Fat Bass_ over there, ‘cause that’s the only thing that’ll protect you.”

       Said little girl’s face contorted into a grimace as if that oleaginous smudge on his shirt was actually streaked onto her own face. Either that or the pun was, indeed, _that_ bad.

        “Nine studio albums and _that’s_ the best you can do? – AAAH!”

       She screeched when her assailant rose, lunged and leapt onto her, landing a punch to her face and a clawing at her torso that sent her spinning. On the first blow, she clung onto dear balance mostly by one foot on the floor; on the second, the swipe dropped her onto the ground with a tumble, a groan and a torn shirt. Her face hit the vinyl-laminate, cruelly minimizing impact onto the rest of her body. Four slashes lent four new cutouts in the aqua-toned fabric of her top, stained red; no doubt as to the man’s claw-like, brightly-colored plastic fingernails being the culprit— four slits revealed the bare skin of her back and the raw flames of her rage.

       Morty ran to her. He had no obligation to care for the fate of _this_ Rick in particular, but the heroic adventurer as well as the human concern in him brought him to her side.

       “Oh, jeez, are you okay—“

       “ _Rick!_ ” hollered the young girl that manned the DJ table, rushing to her side. Her valor did not even last a minute before Britt Bayonet’s male incarnation brutally knocked her down to join Ricktoria on the stage floor.

       “MORTI!” Ricktoria struggled as she called to her companion, her back and side stabbed with pain sharp as blades when she reached out her hand to help the child.

       Morty’s inner call to heroism sounded in his conscience once more, this time with a bizarre sense of the familial. If Rick Sanchez was to have a proper sidekick, who daringly assuming responsibility for the safety of lives, there couldn’t be one more perfect than he. He was not the brightest boy, he was lazy in his everyday life, but still... his gaze travelled to land on his grandfather, a likely source of his bravery and generosity that had been genetically passed down—

       “Rick, what the _hell_?!”

       The forebearer of heroic fortitude was scrambling on his hands and knees in a mode synonymous with greed—animal-like.

       “Just a second, Morty! That rock that—that punk threw was fragmented Isotope-322! _Shit_ , Morty, do you realize how powerful—“

       “RICK! More important things right now!” Shock at Rick’s actions was suspiciously lacking in Morty’s reprimand. He whisked back around to look at Ricktoria.

       A feminine version of the hand of his grandfather slapped Morty’s away. The crumpled form on the ground rose slowly, staggeringly, angrily; she was getting up on her feet, supported by one palm, then the other. A dying flame being sparked back to life by its own embers.

       “Better enjoy that good luck,” Ricktoria rasped. “it’s not gonna last.”

       “Like your karaoke career!” Morty hollered. The brown-haired girl giggled at the taunt, Ricktoria gave the male Morty a smirk.

       A grim smile curved on the drifter’s face. Curiously white teeth revealed a singular stroke of hygiene, as well as mirthful condescension, on his person.

       “I sure will enjoy, thank you. You’re so sweet,” he said, his eyes crinkling and narrowing to seeds in a false, girlish smile. “You know, we can be great friends. Collaborators. That is, _if_ my career spans as long as that travesty on strings from earlier—“ His smile collapsed suddenly into a flinch. “— _ow._ ”

       The “ow” punctuation carried a grunt of annoyance as he felt a pebble strike and bounce off the side of his head. The red mark given him was a blush compared to the weeping lash from earlier that Ricktoria pressed a tissue to.

       Rick stood not far from the dudely diva, dusting a hand off on his coat before jutting it into his pocket.

       “My bad,” Rick confessed. “That wasn’t – uuurrp – Isotope-322 after all, just carbon-63. You know how worthless that crap is? Ugh.”

       The tramp ran a hand through his hair, then accented his _faux bon mots_ earlier on with a flutter of heavy, ebony eyelashes as he looked at Rick. He exchanged his searing look between the male Rick and the female, eventually deciding to stop on Ricktoria to finish their conversation.

       “Like I was saying, we could make beautiful music together. That is, _if_ you didn’t look like _that._ ”

       Ricktoria’s glare took on a frigidity that could freeze mascara. Rick’s unibrow formed an acute, contemptuous angle.

       “You can never be me,” the (not so) pretty man fingered his wig. “Your waist isn’t even small enough,” he scoffed, sizing up Ricktoria’s demure midsection.

       “How’s _this_ for small?!”

       Ricktoria was nourished back to health by her own adrenaline. She dashed across the stage, taking her violin from its resting place on top of a small table toward the corner of the room, and stood menacingly next to one of the stage’s taller electronic structures. Morti, through her injury from the burly strike of the sinewy man, clambered to the dee-jay stand behind Ricktoria, and her little hand clasped a knob. She visibly winced as she turned it.

       The string-scientist armed herself with her bow, held it firmly, and struck a chord out of the violin— and then the chord struck _her._ The sound blasted out of the wrong amplifier. High-pitched feedback whistled along with the shrillness of Tori’s screams and imaginable cursing at Morticia for her miscalculation at the controls, decibels in staggering double-digits split her ears, and sheer volume sent her falling back onto the woodgrained floor.

       Poor Morty had been standing too close. He, too, got pummeled by the violent reverb, falling against Rick, who caught him as he squeezed his own eyes closed as if the echo might push his eyeballs to sink deeper into his skull.

       The amplified harmony from hell was just starting to die down when the preferred recipient of the audio blast, the caustic music critic, stood but took no steps forward. A snicker sounded through his nostrils.

       “Not a bad duet.” He smiled teasingly at the boy who tried to be a hero, paying a new, peculiar attention to him. Something in the way Morty looked up at him—that look when you hear the good soul inside a person hollering silently through the fire of the ego— made him sense that the kid knew the former _she_ that _he_ really was.

       “Oh? A fan…?” A perplexity crossed his face. He reached out to touch Morty, who recoiled. Rick didn’t much care for this celebrity-fan interaction either:

       “ _Hey._ Things have changed, Princess. As of right now, he no longer wants your hands on him,” he sneered.

       “Rick…” Morty squirmed a little in Rick’s very tight grip on his shoulders. His bony fingers shoved into his shirt sleeves—a bit more aggressively than protectively. Which, when it came to Rick, were sometimes one and the same.

       “Oh, I’m sorry, _Morty_ ,” the caring grandparent poured sickening molasses onto his words, bending his head down to look at Morty’s face. “Y-y-you don’t like my embarrassing you in—in front of your top-of-the-charts temptress?”

       His eyes raised from their condescension on Morty; dark brown glazed with the liquor slowly evaporating from his body in the form of stress sweat.

       “Sorry to cut this meet-and-greet short, but…”

       Rick brandished his portal gun. Though his gesture was unintimidating, it still agitated the other man enough: he took a few steps back and held up his hands—a glittery, plastic glue-on fingernail fell. The gun pointed to an insignificant corner where pulled-back stage curtains met a bland white wall, and shot open a portal back home.

       “The show got real boring real fast, and I’ve seen _waaay_ more fun ways to wreck a stage than this.” Rick feigned a sigh. “It’s been real. Definitely an ‘oops’ I’d rather _not_ do again.”

       The scoundrel’s expression gradually grew uglier with anger at the other man’s sarcasm. When Rick’s glance turned upwards earlier, he’d spotted his dainty doppleganger approaching “Britt” from behind. Tori was just getting ready to bring down her violin on him and leave splinters and bruises of revenge embedded in his skull, when the victim-to-be turned around. Her face turned white as her hair at how his—understandably—defeated and furious countenance addressed her.

       “By the way,” Rick said to Ricktoria directly, “what _is_ your waist circumference, anyway?”

       She abruptly looked like she’d changed her mind and wished to inflict the violence onto Rick, now. “None of your—…” The easy answer gave way to a bizarrely easier confession.

       “I don’t know, twenty-three, twenty-four inches—“ she answered.

       The villain stared, dumbfounded—

       “Lucky you,” the experienced dimension-hopper replied as he leant over, wrapped one arm around Ricktoria’s waist, and the other arm around Morty’s as he threw his body back to where his grandson was standing. He followed this swift movement with one more as he leapt into the portal with the two in tow.

       The fluid emerald-green vortex faded back into dull white stucco.

       Britt Bayonet was left there amidst the ruins of the stage, once the nucleus of her career and her life. The surly male silhouette that stood in the dim spotlight rendered a vivid picture of the ruins of the famous singer’s afterlife: the savage, sour-smelling form that now contained and negated her softcore saccharine legacy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Ricktoria’s performance would sound very much like this video: Toxic – Dylan Violin. Find it on Youtube!


	4. IV.

 

       The door to Summer’s room slammed, but not loudly: the noise of its closing amplified by the careless hand of a 17-year-old too exhausted from her day to be concerned about a door falling roughly into its frame. As she let herself fall onto her bed, she looked over to her bedside and her eyes caught sight of something else she should be mindful of.

       “Oh, yeah… I forgot to practice yesterday.” She sat up, ran her hand across the violin laying on her nightstand. Admittedly, the thrill of coining sweet sounds of the strings in just the right way to make a song _was_ inviting. Something inside her, a flame— a mix of responsibility and an urge to craft music— was postponed.

       “Eh, I’ll pick up tonight after dinner. After all, wasn’t it Mozart or something that made some kind of Night Music?”

       Relaxing, her head settled into the nest created by her arms crossed behind it, until the relaxation was broken by a crash in the garage. Her face twitched with barely-disturbed acknowledgment, eyes staying closed.

       Maybe she’d check in on _that_ later, too.

 

       Not that it was much of an emergency or anything—the green gyre of a portal opening up on one of the garage walls, Summer’s little brother and grandpa falling in from it after an adventure. Same old, same old.

       Two weeks had passed since the boys’ encounter in dimension D-735, with overly religious-minded corpses, the talent show with Britt Bayonet’s extremely unholy reincarnation, the female version of Rick, all of that. Memories of the land of the dead as well as the final nail in the coffin that was Britt Bayonet’s career, now known only to him and Rick, had just begun to fade in Morty’s mind. He sunk back into the lull of daily life. Rick had developed a distaste for violin music, as well as any pop that begins with “bubblegum.” Even so: for Morty, the questions were still there.

 

       “Rick,” he started saying. “You remember Chick-Rick? D—do you think we did the right thing by just—just leaving her there, y’know?” Morty brushed what he supposed was “space dirt” off his shoulder. That day, after departing D-735 and leaving Britt to her (his?) own devices, they had dropped Ricktoria off in the Citadel—that corral for rowdy Ricks from every wild west in the multiverse—and returned home unburdened. Just one Rick in the garage, one Morty Smith, and zero Britt Bayonet songs on Morty’s Spotify playlist.

       “Of _course_ , Morty,” Rick spat back, rather literally as at least a few droplets of drool must have flown. He picked up, and began to tinker with, something that resembled a carburetor. “Where else do wa— _uurrrrp_ —wayward Ricks aimlessly roaming the galaxy belong? She’ll be fine. Then again, never saw a Rick in a skirt. Anyway, the crankshaft’s gone again in the ship, so hand me a screwdriver, Morty.” He was all business.

       “Then you can give yourself a big pat on the back for actually helping to fix a sophisticated space cruiser. Ugh, stupid flying piece of shit.”

       “No way,” Morty deadpanned. “You remember what happened last time one of you asked one of me to do that?”

       “Mm. Good point. All right, now, hold this thing still…”

 

       “Hey, Grandpa Rick,” Summer’s voice floated in from the entrance back into the house. “What’d you blow up this time?”

       To most grandfathers, the charming lilt of a granddaughter’s voice _would_ float and decorate the garage with the music of young, warm chatter and laughter. In the case of this particular granddad, Summer’s greeting startled Rick and shattered his precision; his hands slipped, the screwdriver shot awry, and a consequentially frightened Morty jolted and nearly dropped the carburetor. And the garage walls echoed the sound of Rick’s yelp of surprise, cry of pain along with Morty’s of fright, and his curse hot with so much frustration from so small a break in concentration.

       It took all he had to clasp his knuckles, particularly the one on his left thumb that was now smudged crimson, and confine the pain and rage to a pathetic attempt at a warm, gently admonishing smile.

       “Sum-Sum,” he croaked, “N-n—not—not that Grandpa _minds_ your dropping in to say ‘hiii’ and causing the mishandling of a _very_ delicate piece of _very_ shitty machinery, but next time, will you please remember to _knock_ before bringing immense pain to your dear old grandfather?”

       “Okay, okay, jeez. I was just curious. Oh, and dinner’s almost ready. Normally, I wouldn’t do this; I just let you guys come home like whenever to a meal about ten degrees colder than it should be— but just a heads-up: Mom decided to let Dad cook dinner tonight.”

       Rick uttered a non-injury-related “urrgh;” Morty squeaked out an “EEW!”.

       “Yeah,” she finished.

       “A heads-up for you too, Summer,” Rick commented, “try practicing your violin during the day. You know, when we’re _not here._ These last couple of weeks, this afternoon, it’s all I keep hearing, th-th-those squeaky strings, all in my head. And let me tell you: not the most pleasant, or catchy, of earworms.”

       Summer blinked. It’s not every day when a parent or grandparent lectures you _not_ to get better at something.

       “What are you talking about, Grandpa? I didn’t even practice today.”

       Rick stared.

       The sound of an oven’s _ding_ and Jerry cursing (albeit much more feebly than his father-in-law) carried faintly from the kitchen. With that warning of an imminent, risky situation, Summer left.

       “Yyyyyeah… Rick, I haven’t been hearing Summer play her violin all that much.” Morty picked up the carburetor again. “Or is it just me?... what’s with you?”

       “Th…“ Rick started, the booze-rusted gears in his head beginning to spin toward the direction of _am I crazy? b_ efore he shut them down with a firm shake of his head, the gears’ skull casing. “Th—th—that’s irrelevant, Morty. For God’s sake, don’t just stand there, get me a band-aid or something before your old _old_ man hemorrhages to death!”

       “Fine!” Morty hustled to the nearest first-aid kit—or, rather, set of first-aid kits, one labelled for each predicament (in case of: “paralyzation,” “food poisoning,” “solar flare-stroke,” “megaseed poisoning and subsequent anal injury,” “Gazorpazorpian foot to the groin,” among others).

 

       He was blown back by the sudden opening of a portal on a wall he, in that instant, was just walking past—and greeted by the presence of an armed Guard Rick, in white-and-gold Citadel army regalia, carrying a gun and wearing a large section of his hair falling over one eye.

       “Rick Sanchez, C-137?” he inquired, looking straight at the identity he just requested.

       Rick Sanchez, with hands on his hips, a playful air, and a flat, sarcastic tone of voice, answered: “Noooo.”

       An alcohol-fragranced belch accented the guard’s response: “Liar.” He blew a puff of air to lift the tuft of hair that covered half of his face. “We believe _this_ belongs to you.”

 

       With that, he turned, leant backwards into the portal—half his body disappearing in the whirlpool of energy for a second—hefted, and threw the body of Ricktoria Sanchez onto the garage floor, the contact with which drew a non-verbal complaint from the aforementioned.

       “ _Wha—…_ ” Morty took a few steps back. “Ricktoria…”

       “You wanna get your eyes checked, pal?” Rick scoffed. “She’s a _Rick_ , isn’t she? Your problem, not mine.”

       “I beg to differ. The irony is, we can’t afford to lose anymore Ricks. These days, too many’ve been going.”

       “Going? Like—like dying?” Morty questioned.

       “Again?” Rick added.

       “That included,” the guard allowed hair to cover his right eye, his gaze downcasting. There was a persistent note of melancholy in his voice; every word he spoke dripped with pessimism.

       “Vanishing every which-way, you name it. Massacres and government protests taking a violent turn, refugee Ricks dragging their asses to other dimensions and making us work to go find them… like _this_ one, some time ago.” He nudged Ricktoria with his foot. “Speaking directly on her, believe me, she’s been our problem for long enough.”

       Ricktoria, in a rather un-Rick-like fashion, uttered just a noncommittal huff.

       “It hasn’t been easy bringing back the ones we actually _could_ bring back. Who knew that one little Morty could bring so much hell?... Anyway, peace.”

       The guard disappeared through the portal from which he came, and the eerie glow in the garage dimmed and faded away.

       The little Morty that stood in the garage, the one unrelated to the hellish Rick devastation, rapidly lost coloration in his face and a tranquil heartbeat in his chest. _A…a Morty?_

 _A_ Morty _was killing Ricks?_

       He turned slowly to his grandfather, who was, thankfully, alive and well. “Rick… s—suh –s—some Morty’s going around killing other Ricks? In the Citadel, or… oh, man, this is…this is horrible—“

       “Don’t even think of saying ‘you can’t imagine’ why they do that, Morty,” Rick admonished him.

       “I wasn’t going to!” the boy cut short any snarky speech that was coming. “But you bet I can—can imagine! I’m _fourteen_ , Rick! We get mad! You think—y-you think a Morty wouldn’t feel like killing a Rick sometimes?!”

       Rick blinked, his expression blank and now bereft of any sass to fire back. “Wow, Morty. Tell me how you _really_ feel, so we can get it on tape for the family therapist who’ll soon be able to afford the vacation that _your_ parents wanted.”

       Morty had his attention on the discarded Rick on the cold floor of the garage. “Oh, Rick, forget it!” He held out his palms toward Ricktoria to bring Rick’s attention to the current situation. “Bigger problems…?!”

       Rick sighed. Something, perhaps a softening of his nature by way of the sip of whiskey he just slugged down from his flask, made him kneel down and take a look at the girl equivalent of his genius.

       “For the record, Ricks don’t usually give a shit when they ask you this, but… j-jus—just because I’m curious, what happened to you?”

       Tori peered up at him, her cheek on the ground in line with the rest of her body; an initially wide-eyed connection with Rick’s vaguely interested gaze switched to a cold independence. She hoisted herself up to her feet.

       “Not much!” she said, her voice almost singing with mock cheer. “I got to visit the old haunt, hang out with some old ‘friends’ who decided I was too much Chick and not enough Rick, and take a long walk down Bad Memory Lane. So—“ she clasped her hands together in the fakest of fake gratitude, “— _thanks_.”

       “Oh, oh, you’re _welcome_ , missy,” he responded by force of habit, a sarcasm polished over many, many years and lacquered to a shine with a sweetened vocal inflection. “And just think, with a few more dollars in your pocket, you could have the luxury of adding a ‘rich’ to all that ‘bitch.’”

       “Rick!” Morty glared, despite Tori’s ourburst of laughter. He looked, quizzically, at her.

       “Man, you _know_ how to charm a girl!” Tori’s body bent forward as she doubled over with bitter glee. The confusion on Morty’s face switched to worry when her laughs were halted by a cry of pain. She clutched firmly at her back. And here, Rick’s smugness turned to something _approaching_ concern, at least.

       “Whoa—you all right?” Morty reached a helping hand over to Tori, who jerked away from him.

       “No! No, it’s fine.” She tuned her voice so as not to sound loud, pained and unconvincing. “It’s just from a while ago. Remember, Britt Bayonet? You were there. For someone that _used_ to be a girl, he sure doesn’t hit like one.” A final mewl of “ow” punctuated her sentence.

       “Try not to laugh so hard in my face next time. It might hurt you less,” Rick recommended.

       “I just gotta… hang on.” Tori took some steps away from them, and shrugged off her labcoat. She straightened her spine and, in her childish attempt at privacy in the garage’s corner, tried to soothe her back by rubbing it. Her fingers only reactivated the sear on the wounds that looked like grill marks; all only worsened. The four gashes had only just begun their natural stitchwork, reduced to four lines of dull red crayon.

       She tried again, alternating from soft touches to deeper massage. Her teeth gritted against each other, enamel roughing up on enamel, as the wound living there ignited into a sharper burn.

       As she tried to soothe the stinging flesh, the hem of her light blue sweater lifted, revealing delicate skin and an inch or two of greenish-blue coloring to it. Morty’s eyes, automatically watchful and scrupulous when it comes to female flesh, caught first the odd hue of Tori’s skin rather than the femininity of it: a true testament to just how unusual and alarming the sight was.

       “H—hey, Chick Rick, is that what’s hurting you so bad? Maybe we can help y—“ In a move that could be blamed more on boyish curiosity rather than inquiry as to one’s well-being, Morty took the hem at the back of Tori’s blouse and dared to lift it up. It was fortunate for him that this formidable, female Rick was just incapacitated enough to barely manage a try at swatting his hand away.

       “Ow! Morty, look—it’s cool, just leave it alone—“ she held herself upright with one hand on the closest wall; she’d already been a heap on the floor enough for one day.

       The sight hidden under the azure rayon-polyester knit was neither graceful nor alluring. Any allure that _could_ be attributed to the monstrosity on Ricktoria’s back would only be appreciated by a doctor or an artist: both of whom would stand together in awe of the hues of navy and olive green that made up her bruises that had blossomed dangerously near her ribs, close to her right side. However, only slightly blurred by those bruises was a display much stranger, more intricate, a mix of science and nature that required drawing lines and connecting dots to be understood.

       Morty, bright as he was, could only conceive of the torridness of the injury; of the sympathy-pain he felt in his own side upon looking at the cold-hued remains of harsh impacts onto fragile skin, muscle and bone. Then—he squinted. He jumped at the silence being taken over by Tori’s speaking.

       “As much as I wanted a future on the stage, being the tattooed lady at the circus wasn’t _quite_ what I had in mind. Are you guys done?” Tori saw no need to resist—just yet. It wasn’t like she had anything to hide.

       “What… _is_ that?...” Morty whispered. “Rick, do you—“

       Of the two adventurers, no brain registered this patterned canvas of _unknown_ underneath the bruises more clearly than Rick’s.

       He looked positively horrified.

 


	5. V.

       “Rick, do you think…”

       The space scholar’s eyes darted here and there, small distances from here to there of skin on Ricktoria’s back, studying them rapidly while his mouth performed the infrequent miracle of staying shut. Bent forward, his hands on his knees and eyes forward, Rick was the very picture of studiousness.

       Morty held the bottom of her shirt just high up enough to expose not only injuries, but also information: the fabric bunched and resting on her shoulder blades and letting all the stories on the exposed flesh tell themselves. There was an odd thrill pulsing through Morty’s blood, something to do with lifting a girl’s clothes _and_ being on the brink of some scientific discovery.

       “Do you think you’ve ever seen a tattoo as cool as this…?” he blurted out, pointing to clusters of lines and shapes on Tori’s back.

       Rick’s more delicate-bodied double bore a tattoo, plain as day, that spanned her entire back. The observing Rick had not yet relaxed from the initial shock earlier, and his voice had a more serious note to it. A distractedness in it, audible when he spoke, showed signs of his using his previous knowledge and new conclusions to calm himself.

       “Yes, Morty… this was once someone’s blank canvas, before they’d dr—drawn their dreams and plans onto it with a needle.”

       Tori only rolled her eyes and stood still. “ _So_ glad to know I’ve got a future in art. Somehow, I pictured I’d end up in a gallery instead of someone’s janky garage.”

 _“Janky?!”_ Rick piped up.

       “Rick!” Morty cut the petty argument short.

 _What the hell,_ Tori thought. _Let them see._ Of all the ri(ck)diculous situations she’d been in, maybe this Rick—and his Morty—could be trusted.

       What madness haunted these dreams, though, that lingers and continues to haunt upon this woman’s spine? Along and dancing around that column of backbone, on the smooth planes of her sides, were designs—not of flowing, organic curves to match her own, but of a mechanical, stiff nature—that were so methodically placed there that they could have been numbered. Angle by angle, section by section. Actually, they _were_ numbered, in some places.

       “Industrial art? I dunno,” Morty concluded; a still wordless Rick was not sure.

 _Plans…_ Rick traced a finger and a thought along one of those lines. His genius mind held one dot, one shape, one line accountable for the next, every scratch and marking a subsidiary, correspondent or root of the other.

       Tori flinched, a mighty unusual flinch that took place in her whole form rather than just on her face. Something about the pokes and slow drags of Rick’s fingers on her bare skin brought a full-body rattle that might have been sickening her. A chill, then a heat; a curling up of the stomach that felt as if it was trying to more closely roommate with her lungs, closing off air. Taking it—whatever _it_ was—like a Rick, she scowled and ignored this near-relative of nausea that had taken her senses captive.

       “You’re close, Morty,” Rick finally said, moving away from the site of inspection. Morty held his breath; Tori let out hers. The nausea subsided, but the discomfort transformed to an emptiness that stayed.

       “It’s a blueprint.” He was genuinely intrigued. The bearer of the blueprint now twisted her body at the waist, distorting the diagrams on her skin, so she could look at and direct a low, mildly alarmed “what?” at Rick. The boy opened his mouth to ask another question, and Rick answered it for him. “Don’t know what it’s for— not yet, anyway. I’ve…never seen one like it before.”

       “But you’ll find out, right?” Morty couldn’t help himself from asking a question akin in dumbness to inquiring if the sky was blue.

       Scolding a Morty that was perhaps losing faith in his grandpa’s scientific abilities, Rick cast his grandson a snide look out of the corner of his eye.

       “ _Absolutely_ not, Morty,” he walked away as he talked, lifting a long fold-out table tucked away in some dusty region of the garage and preparing a makeshift lab workbench. “Imagine all the interdimensional cable episodes of th—the _Reel Alewives of Lake Erie_ I gotta watch, or the nice lo— _uurrp_ —oong bout of salmonella I could get from Jerry’s cooking that’ll lay me up for weeks. But _instead,_ if I don’t feel like partaking in those activities _…_ yes, I _will_ find out.”

 

*

       “ _RUN!_ ” came the raucous, terrified shout of a commander Rick, piercing the air that was thick with humidity and gunfire.

       “If your insignificant lives are worth something in any dimension other than this one, get your laser guns out and your asses MOVING! Go, go, go!”

       The Citadel thundered with the heavy, rapid footfalls of various Ricks and Mortys with various purposes: armed guards, their guns alternating from resting on their shoulders to being aimed and fired, commander Ricks locking themselves in the restrooms of public places (presumably hiding), and haggard, unofficial Ricks protesting all the goings-on and weapons going off with much vigor.

       The actions of the Mortys alongside them were also diverse. Some looked up obediently at the Ricks who vehemently called for a new government that took better care of Ricks, others shook their fists with their elders for better treatment of Mortys—and still others fumbled with weapons, not for the cause of Ricks or to stop the enslavement of Mortys that was commonplace nowadays, but only so the protests and riots and warring on both sides would stop and living in fear would no longer be obligatory for them. The sirens, explosions, and crashes of shattering windows, in homes and formerly-quiet shops down the street, _had_ to stop at some point soon.

       Not all Ricks were concerned just for themselves. There was one guard who distractedly watched the motions of one particular Guard Morty who misstepped more than he marched; his head was bandaged generously from a blow received there. The bandages were so plentiful, in fact, that one of his eyes was obscured by them.

       The curious guard Rick approached him. “You okay, little guy?”

       Guard Morty turned to him, but his heel twisted, and the guard Rick became the recipient of an oversized machine gun to the head and collapsed on the ground. The young soldier, after _another_ clumsy moment, frowned in frustration.

       After watching that, another, less inquisitive guard Rick addressed him. “Hey, you can’t go out there. Not like that,” the guard Rick halted him with both speech and a hand held up to the wounded Morty’s face.

       “I’m okay!” the shorter sentinel answered.

       “That looks bad,” he advised, nodding curtly at the covered wound. “One good blow and you’ll be out of commission, and the last thing we need is another weak-ass Morty. Let me see…” he extended a hand to begin the unravelling of the bandages to examine the level of injury to Morty’s head.

       He pulled back when he met with the boy’s striking his arm away.

       “Look, I’m fine! Y—you—you said the last thing you need is a weak-ass Morty, right? Then let me _go_!”

       The guard Morty seemed to calm down considerably fast for his predicament, and ran. He touched his covered brow, adjusted the bandages with a shaky hand, and advanced.

       “While the President’s absent, let’s make the most of this opportunity we’ve got!” the small guard cried. “Let’s go!”

       The white-haired warrior, briefly mystified, lay his rifle on his shoulder and dashed forward.

 

 

*

       When your daughter is filling the house with beautiful music, your husband is active in his pursuit for employment (and safely away from the stove, refrigerator and all other facilities used for cooking), and real-life versions of violent sci-fi movie effects are at a minimum, all is right in the world.

       Beth happily walked down the hall, passing by Summer’s room where strains of four-string melodies freely flowed—inside which the girl had fallen asleep on her bed, her Spotify classical-music playlist accompanying her snoring— and practically floated from quarter to quarter of her abode.

       Morty waved to his mother from vacuuming the living room. _Vacuuming! Imagine._ A clean home, a considerate son… just one last family member remaining to be there, doing something to warm her heart.

       She opened the door to the garage to find Rick standing at his makeshift table behind a topless, white-haired young lady seated on top of it—whose back he was carefully inspecting (and whose front was curiously left alone).

       Ricktoria took a moment to lift her hand and wave. Some curiosity had slowed her reflexes of manners.

       And then not all was quite right in the Bethaverse.

       “That…is so… wrong,” Beth observed.

       “Science is about facts, theories and conspiracies; no room for opinions, sweetie.” Rick set down the pen after taking a few notes and resumed examining Tori’s back, using a forefinger and thumb to stretch a parcel of skin taut to get an extra-close look at a particular section of tattoo. The old ink spread out and speckled.

       “O—kay, then. Would I be wrong in _theorizing_ right now that due to the fact I have _never_ seen this…really weird clone of yourself, or—whoever she is—before…”

       Tori again fixed a glance on her, one of mild offense.

       “…the level of _creepy_ in this scenario is appropriately really, really high?” Beth fought to choose her words carefully, both to cope with the unthinkable of her father’s current experiment and the unseeable in her mind of what biological matters that experiment might entail.

       “No.” His answer came in proper to-the-point format. “Because the quality we colloquially identify as ‘creepiness’ is relative.” Rick casually shucked off the latex gloves. “Speaking of creepy relatives, do you know if Jerry’s handling dinner again tonight? ‘Cause I’d really appreciate some notice so I can just evacuate the premises, rather than being subjected to forcibly evacuating my bowels as a result of Jerry’s—ah—cooking. _Again_.”

       “I heard that,” came Jerry’s voice through the doorway before his face did. “And I’ll have you know— _Oh._ ” He shielded his eyes with his arm, an action ignited by a muddle of disgust in Rick, embarrassment, and maybe a silenced curiosity in the half-naked woman on the table.

       “EWWW! Oh, God, _Rick!_ What the hell is going on?!”

       The moment Jerry unblocked his vision, his focus turned away, like a proper husband’s, away from the strange bosoms and onto his wife.

       “Beth, I _told_ you! The moment you let your father live in this house, I told you we would have to deal with his nonsense, and his perversions, and his… extraterrestrial affairs!”

       Ricktoria’s inappropriately relaxed, deadpan expression changed to one of insult. _“Excuse_ me?”

       “Jerry, stop it.” Beth elbowed him. “Let’s—let’s go. You said there was some caprese you were gonna fix for…”

       Rick did not hinder a throaty noise of disgust, speaking wordlessly on behalf of the household opinion of Jerry’s cooking. “Bwuuugh.”

       “Beth—“ Jerry started, before his wife placed a hand over his mouth and another on his chest.

       “Sorry, Dad. A—and, uh…” she finally, directly addressed Ricktoria:

       “Nice to meet you.” Beth nodded politely to Tori before disappearing.

       Tori nodded back as quickly as she could before Beth’s departure, smiling, even after Mrs. Smith’s shadow was gone from the wall. The friendly warmth faded, but her gaze was still held there—that spot in the doorway where Beth stood just moments ago. Rick took his place again at her back.

       “Who was that with Beth?” she asked, with more than a hint of distant wonder in her voice.

       Rick took a desk lamp from an equipment table and started fiddling with the cord. “If you really are a Rick, you’d know that there comes a point in your life when, as the smartest man in the universe, you stop asking the _big_ question people always ask themselves—‘what’s the meaning of the universe’—because you’d already found the answer to that one. And there’s an even bigger mystery right in front of you, or next to you on the couch when you’re trying to watch TV. And he calls himself your son-in-law. And that new question this Rick asks himself is, in regards to that strange creature: ‘Who’s that?...’ no...” He lectured with more precision. “‘ _What’s_ that?’”

       “Mmm.” Tori’s response was perfectly vacant; absent as to any position on the authenticity of Rickness, to any opinion on the weird guy called Jerry, to the entire conversation. Her attention was still fixed on that empty air, out there in the hall.

       “It’s weird.”

       “What is?” Rick’s mind had only slightly strayed from stringing the little desk lamp’s cord round and round around a smoke detector on the ceiling, and bundling and securing it so that he could make use of a light source from above.

       “This feeling of déjà vu I just got. Like this has happened before. Like one minute, you’ve got me lying down on a lab table… and the next, before I know it… Beth appears.”

       He looked at Tori, not in the same way he’d been looking at her back. His brow creased and dipped low in a half-a-second search for any basis to this strange remark, narrowing his eyes and dulling his focus. The lamp cord partially unwound from the raised disc of the smoke detector and, upon his speedy return to the diligence of his task, he repeated the winding-up and went looking for an extension cord. Sometime, he would install electrical outlets on the ceiling. That or do it in the much more practical way that was, truthfully, an insult to his inexhaustible genius: duct-tape a power stick to the ceiling.

       “Hm. A bit like how one minute, the flesh on your back was as pristine as an untouched desert island, or self-esteem before discovering the Internet…”

       The makeshift ceiling light was on, and his now-free hands settled onto her sides, along the margin where the ink neatly ended and her ribs began to protrude.

       “…and the next, it’s a sketch of a modern Manhattan Project with the elegance of New York Fashion Week.”

       Her scowl and squint, eyes beady and observing him out of the corners, made for an almost threatening look. It was the hard, unfeeling, outer contrast to the softness of her insides that were gelatinizing more and more by the minute.

       She looked over her shoulder. “What?”

       “Th—this—this is… what you have here is a blueprint for a deadly weapon.” His stutters did not diminish this unyielding truth.

       Tori’s pupils froze into place.

       “And, if I know my shit, looks like a _shi no ganbō_ or some model thereof. Typical: build something even remotely technologically advanced, they—they slap a Japanese name on it. _Kawaii_ culture, am I right?”

 _A deadly weapon?_ A tattoo becoming a terror isn’t exactly something people react calmly to. A mark of being ‘bad,’ a hazy memory of needles and skin and temporary pain, suddenly was something _very_ bad that could leave a mark on the whole world. For that matter, she wondered—this world? Or another one? Tori was, of course, aware of different worlds and multiverses.

       Rick, meanwhile, kept his crusty stoic nature. But— this schematic for that huge weapon… fear and fascination, at the same time, cradled his brain. His fingers drew the lines on the grid system; he looked for any notes or legends left on her skin. No… no one would leave their name on something as intricately cruel as this. He felt quick, short vibrations under his hands. A chattering, like teeth, of her spinal column. Barely noticeable.

       “You’re shivering. Cold?... in this frigid _June_ weather?” The grittiness of his voice cut through her mind’s speeding on dark highways.

       “No,” she responded. “It’s frigid old dirtbags that bother me.”

       Rick, positively I.D.’ed by the terminology, controlled the fury that came over his face and channeled it into a downcast glance and a smirk.

       “So… a deadly weap—… _wait._ ” Tori’s voice came back at full volume, unobscured by some creeping knot in her stomach. Her craning around to face Rick was slow, sensuous. Deadly.

 _“_ You said you’d never seen it before.“

       “Lied. And if there’s any authenticity to the ‘Rick’ in ‘Ricktoria,’ that shouldn’t surprise you. I acted like I didn’t know about it in front of Morty because it’s not something he should know about… that kind of ruthlessness and power shouldn’t get into a kid’s head. Not when they’re too hormonal and stupid to know what to do with it yet. What this baby can do…”

       His voice sunk to a rumble, his fingertips smoothed along a line representation of insane technology, and then rested on the back of her neck. A charge of lightning, as if his digits were electrodes, zapped through Tori’s body; her teeth gnashed harder in her trying to ignore it.

       “…I don’t like thinking about.” He perked up again, a little too quickly. “And believe me, watching _that_ amount of civilization get decimated sounds pretty damn amazing. You know, if it wasn’t for the… the civilization.”

       Decency, either a far-removed acquaintance or permanent oversight of Ricks, seemed to nudge Tori to finally cross her arms over her chest. Or maybe she felt cold. She stiffened, then, with a gasp.

       “ _Shi no ganbō_ … I’ve only ever heard that name in the Citadel.”

       Rick’s unibrow wrinkled. “ _They_ know about it?!... okay, okay.” He pinched the very top of the bridge of his nose in between his finger and thumb. “You know… of all the potential mass destruction, of how in _hell_ word about that bomb with a vengeance has spread to genius _dumbasses_ at the Citadel… there’s still the most baffling thing about this whole thing…”

       “Which is?” In response, he thrust a demanding, searching finger into her face and an outburst in his volume.

       “ _How_ in the _f—k_ did you not know what that tattoo _was_?!” he practically yelled. “Of _that_ size?! I-I-I-I mean, was it a parlor or a sensory deprivation tank you wandered into, thinking you were just gonna get a—a nice, innocent little tramp stamp?!”

       In one rotary movement, pivoted on her bottom on the table, Tori spun around to face him; she emitted a laugh to scorn. “For _your_ information,” she hissed, “I was in rehab, I—I was out of it… and I thought I was getting acupuncture!”

       “Acu- _uuURRP_ -puncture?!?” Rick snapped back.

       “ _Yes,_ acu—uhhrrp—puncture!” She mocked him in return, word-splitting belch included. Tori was adamant, her movements almost frantic with her temper.

       “All I did was _lie_ down—“ she plopped down onto her stomach, on the table, and splayed her limbs ‘til they were hanging off the edges. “—relax, and say, _give it to me!_ ”

       A passerby’s listening ear heard, and its owner stopped his walking feet in objection.

       “EEWW!” Jerry peeked in to bravely witness the presumably scandalous goings-on. “This is a _family_ home!”

       “Then CLOSE THE DOOR!” shouted both Ricks in unison.

       Regretting poking his nose (and the rest of his face) where it didn’t belong, the Smith family patriarch conceded and pulled on the door, shutting it with enough force that made the hinges whine.

       With sighs—either of general irritation, or relief from Jerry’s absence—Tori took on her previous pose on the table, sitting upright, hands in her lap and arms partly obscuring her chest. Rick grumbled a “Jesus _,_ ” and with hands heavy from aggravation, he took to putting away a microscope he ended up not using after all.

 _These last couple of days…_ her thoughts fizzled like so much seltzer water; too much had gone on. She went from just hunting down a grossly-misbehaved Morty to ending up in another Rick’s garage, learning how frogs in biology classes felt from being prodded and inspected to the point their skin loses its placid springiness. She had gone from just being a female Rick with a rather painful acupuncture job to a bearer of war and technological ruination.

       Annihilation, and great multitudes of death, would fling the contents of the bucket of life-sustaining red paint far and wide, and it could very well be all her fault…

       The woman sighed; infuriated, frustrated air, unable to pass through her pressed lips, escaped through her nostrils. ‘Normal’ was a quality not commonly found in Ricks, and Tori was no exception. She couldn’t have that luxury. Right now, any theories of the future of those blueprints on her body didn’t just take a backseat: they were placed in some distant trunk in her mind.

       Driving full-speed ahead, now, were her senses. She tried to shake off being under the influence of Rick’s fingertips, travelling dots in a search for answers that was as scientific as it was brazen. The crossing-over of these two qualities sent her brain careening into a ditch that was dark with shame. She envisioned that ditch: ruinous with bodies in the dark, the view veiled by looming tree branches of memories. The mental picture crashed, went up in flames in her head, thrown off-course by the pressing of Rick’s hands as they continued their quest for the facts within her figure. And this process repeated and repeated with every passing second, her physically-evident anger fanning the imaginary flames. Sensation, crash, burn. Feel, remember, ignite.

       She hated the fact that she still trembled under his touch.


End file.
